Do you ever have foods from your childhood that just bring back all kinds of memories?

I have a lot of those food memories since we spent time cooking and eating together at our home, which I am so grateful for! My mom made breakfast regularly, and baked oatmeal was one of my favorites that we had often (along with sunflower seed granola).

Shortly after I first started this blog, I re-made my mom’s recipe for baked oatmeal and posted it. That was over 7 years ago, and the original photos were kinda awful, so I decided to revisit the recipe, update the post, and add some new photos (I even made a video!).

If you loved the old recipe, don’t worry: the old recipe is still in this post underneath the new recipe card!

Our Gluten Free Baked Oatmeal is a healthy comfort food recipe that’s also vegan and nut free (except for coconut). The original recipe was already pretty healthy, but I added my own twists to it and removed the egg and dairy.

Baked oatmeal is an excellent make-ahead or meal prep breakfast recipe for people who don’t have a lot of time to cook in the mornings. Make a batch or 2 of baked oatmeal on the weekend, and you have easy breakfasts during the week!

How to make vegan baked oatmeal

Since this baked oatmeal recipe doesn’t have eggs in it, we use flax meal (aka flaxmeal, flaxseed meal, or ground flaxseed) to help bind the ingredients together, so make sure you don’t skip the flax meal!

And don’t skip the thickening step. This recipe calls for thickening the flax meal and coconut milk for 10 minutes before adding it to the oats. Flax seed and flax meal gels up in liquid similar to how chia seed gels up, and it makes a great egg replacement in certain kinds of recipes, like this one.

Thickening up the flax meal before adding it to the oats allows it to coat the oats evenly, instead of just dropping to the bottom of the pan as it cooks. If you don’t thicken your flax meal first, the recipe won’t turn out.

Have some fun with the add-ins for this recipe! You can add seeds (pumpkin or sunflower seeds), nuts (if tolerated), raisins, chocolate chips, you name it!

And you can serve this how you like. I love pouring milk over baked oatmeal in a bowl, but my kids liked eating these like breakfast bars. The choice is yours!

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8×8-inch square pan with parchment paper or lightly spray the bottom of the pan with oil. Set aside.

Combine the oats, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Mix together the canned coconut milk, maple syrup, golden flax meal, vanilla, lemon zest, and Stevia drops (if using), and let this flax mixture rest for about 10 minutes to thicken.Don’t skip this part! You can also warm this up in the microwave a little bit (like 45 seconds) to help thicken this a little faster. The flaxseed will gel up to make this thicker, and it holds the recipe together. The flaxseed replaces eggs in this recipe.

Once the flax meal mixture has thickened, mix in the oat mixture and the diced strawberries. Pour into the prepared pan and spread evenly.

Bake for 30-35 minutes until set and lightly golden brown.

Remove from oven and cool for about 15 minutes before cutting. Cut into squares and serve with or without milk. Enjoy!

Our old recipe for Baked Oatmeal:

Our original recipe for gluten free baked oatmeal was posted back in May of 2012 (less than 1 year after starting the blog!), so we remade this recipe and added new photos. Here is the original recipe below: